AuthorTopic: Getting used to XFCE (Read 5613 times)

I just installed Vector 5.9. It's been awhile since I have used VL (VL 5 to be exact)

I am using XFCE for the first time. Everything is great. I can't figure out how to change the XFCE GTK theme. I have googled, searched this forum, and checked the XFCE wiki but I didn't see a how to. I found something on the XFCE wiki that says extract theme to ~/.theme , but I didn't find a /.themes anywhere on my system.

Can someone point me in the right direction? (I can't imagine this is an unusual request.)

Regards,Blair

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kukibl

Extract downloaded themes to /usr/share/themes folder. Do that as root, of course. Or create .themes directory in your home directory and extract it there (I never did theme adding this way, but I guess it could work).

There really is no extra step, once you click on a theme it will instantly change, same with icons and so on. If it doesn't show up to be clicked, then it's either not compatible or not installed correctly / completely.

The themes I tried were all from xfce-look.org. I unzipped to the directory noted in this thread and then went into the settings, but they didn't show up. I did make sure they were all under the XFCE heading so they would be compatible and had good reviews as kind of a double check... I am confused now.

This is very interesting. When you look into usr/share/themes you should see individual files with names of themes, something like this..:usr/share/themes/theme-1usr/share/themes/theme-2usr/share/themes/theme-3usr/share/themes/and-so-on...inside of those should hold the xfwm4 , gtk, and or gtk-2.0

if you notice any theme files just hanging out in the themes directory and not within it's theme-name directory then something's wrong there (it's not installed correctly). However if all are in the proper places, then we have another issue somewhere else.

I think the best way to help resolve this , would be to list the themes that are having this issue and where they were from.

They are in usr/share/themes, and I made sure they all had the xfwm4 subdirectory. I got AterAlpha, Glow Ibex and TechniX, all from xfce-looks. I've tried several in addition, but I removed those after they didn't work. I am copying these from the file manager with root permissions... could that be causing permission problems? Kinda wondering how to get them where they need to go if I can't use the root priveleges though.

Sorry for a late response. I was able to find the Glow Ibex theme, and the TechniX (which has 3 versions, so I'll skip that one for now ). I will check it out to see if it is working on one of my systems.

Meanwhile (no, not back at the ranch ) , you could try creating a .themes directory inside of your user account's /home , and extract the themes in question there. Try themes and see if they work from that point.

Update: Glow Ibex This theme does not work on my system either. It's also not exactly an XFCE theme, but it is a GTK theme. Unfortunately I could not find any information leading towards what version of GTK it is compatible with (perhaps the author does).

Thanks! I tried the .theme directory, but that didn't work either. I've also tried more themes, but they still aren't showing up. After hearing what happened to you, however, I'm not sure that means anything beyond they don't work. Do you (or any one else hitting this thread) have some specific themes I could search for and install that are known to work?

I think Glow Ibex theme depends on metacity and for any other theme you may need to install the theme engine it uses as well. We have some engines in the repo like clearlooks.Sorry if this sounds a bit vague to you but I am not really a themer

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"There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite."Jorge Luis Borges, Avatars of the Tortoise. --Jumalauta!!

I had not seen that page but found similar instructions in the forums. Assuming {sysprefix} is usr, I'm putting them in as directed (usr/share/themes). If that's not what it means, however, I'm putting them in the wrong place and may need it spelled out a little more!

That's the right place. I'm not running Xfce at the moment but I plan on doing a system rebuild in the next few days and if this isn't resolved by then I'll play with the themes and see what I can do. I know I did have themes working on my VL 5.9 Standard install but I replaced that with Light.